Material Culture: Production and Consumption in Europe 1400-1800
[Dr Angela McShane, Research Department, V&A; Associate Fellow, History Department,
University of Warwick]
Unlike accepted social and political utility of conspicuous consumption, effects of widespread proliferation and consumption of material goods not well understood: in 16 th cent fears of national treasure being depleted ( money spent on foreign goods lost); 16-18 th cent fears of moral depravation caused by luxurious living especially on 1. Young men; 2. Women; 3. Middling and lower sorts
(Luxury debates); fears that social distinctions impossible to maintain.
Was this woman, wearing a higly fashionable gown , Kate the Cookmaid or my lady?
Courtier or courtesan?
To understand increasing consumption in early modern Europe: need to investigate interrelationship between three key economic and social elements: 1. Production systems; 2.
Consumption practices; 3. Early modern Household
Theoretical Models of Production: ‘Peasant ‘ of ‘Self-sufficiency’ Model: Untouched by market; No specialisation of labour; Direct and local provisioning of basic needs; Work geared to leisure – not profit or consumption; Classic ‘Industrial’ model : Few goods made at home:
Dependency on the market; Ready made goods – limiting individuality and leisure [Marx]; Place of production and consumption far apart; Specialisation and division of labour [Adam Smith];
Work ethic – work for its own sake/profits [Weber]
How and at what point did European states move from self-sufficiency model to specialisation of labour and complete market dependence of industrial model?
Problems with historic models: Underlying nostalgia for imaginary traditional society [no
‘peasant model’ found in early modern Europe]; Moral judgements of theorists relating to need and consumption; Role of fashion and women seen as pernicious [Veblen]; Studies based on these models: Lack adequate empirical research; Initial investigations based on imports and exports of ‘staple’ raw materials [iron, textiles, coal], not internal trade or consumption of goods;
No account of multilayered production processes; No account of role of women and children in work force; No account of household economy; No room in dichotomous models for period of transition;
These models cannot account for paradox that income levels and prices seem to fall but consumption levels across all social stratas rise.
Demonstrable that mass production and international trade in goods using sophisticated specialised systems of production, distribution, banking and credit systems already exist in 16 th and early 17 th century: Examples: European pin trade [esp. Neths, France and England]; German
Stonewares [Gaimster]; Venetian Silks [Mola]

‘ Industrious Revolution’ Model
: Jan de Vries: Production and Consumption hand in hand; Need to understand interactions between household economy and the market; Production and income generation of all members of the household [including women – though still ignores children] need to be taken into account; However: women’s work not just at level of basic labour: Women run businesses; operate in highly skilled trades; employed at highest levels of design; run design schools and publish designs. Examples: Goldsmith Louisa Courtald; Spitalfields Silk Designer Anna
Garthwaite; Designer and head of design school in Nuremburg: Margherita Helm [see V&A website
‘Search the Collections’ feature for details of these items and people]
Key finding: consumption not enforced by production, but production driven by culturally contingent desire to consume.
Early Modern Consumer Demand or Consumer Revolution? Models of ‘Consumer Society’ : 1.
Real choice [Braudel] increasing quantity and variety of commodities, rise in taste and style as differential rather than sumptuary laws: 2: ‘A deeper penetration of the physical by the psychological and the intellectual’ creating ‘profound social changes’ [S.A. M. Adshead Material Culture in
Europe and China 1400-1800 (1997): [Lord Dacre: ‘Men get how they can, it is in their spending that they illustrate their philosophy’.] First ‘Consumer Society’ Europe 1500-1800 : Reasons: 1.
European Marriage Pattern; 2.
Globalisation: satisfied old needs and suggested new ‘needs’; 3.
Sophisticated economic infrastructure; 4. Open exchange of ideas and technologies.
Not a Consumer
‘revolution’: 1.
Changes too slow – evolutionary; 2. Patchy impact - socially and geographically; 3.
Consumption rise not connected to revolutionary effects of later industrialisation or urbanisation.
Answer to question of shift towards dependence on the market may lie in looking at consumption practices: ie household consumption and the changing range of goods:
Many varieties of records used but especially: 1. Probate Inventories; 2. Contemporary observers: i.e.
Gregory King; 3. Trade figures [though internal trade figures still relatively unknown]; 4. Archive of material culture itself [still much underresearched]: Inventories studied done for England, Scotland,
Netherlands, Low Countries [Belgium], Germany and France. All show a steady rise across 16-18th cent of number range and quality of material possessions: Examples: Dutch rural area of
Krimpanerwaard: in periods of protracted falling agricultural prices: average inventory: 1630 – 70: 47 types of good, 241 items: 1700-1795- 71 tyoes of good, 538 items.
Increased goods always in domain of the exotic, comfort, interior decoration, dining table culture: Nothern France: invetories show growth in numbers of items from 47% to 82% of total wealth depending on social category; England
– Weatherill and Overton, et al’s studies show huge grwth in new goods over time – 17th cent 30%

housholds had new goods, by 1750, 80% households had them. Median nos of pieces of furniture doubled from 12 – 24.
Who consumed, what and why?: Interpretive models for strategic consumption : 1. Emulation/
Imitation [Veblen/Simmel]; 2. Marketing and Retail Developments [Veblen/Walsh]; Early modern
‘Fashion System’ [Riello]:
Social and culturally contingent models
: 1. ‘Imitatio’ [Berg]; 2.
Respectability [Woodruff Smith]; 3. Self-fashioning of identity [Roche]; Health and happiness
[Slack]; Domestic comfort [Crowley]; Politeness and pleasure [Klein, Brewer]
What were patterns of new consumption? 1. New goods: Clocks; Pocket watches ; Kitchen goods;
‘ Jacks’; Saucepans; Dining ware; Tea, coffee and related utensils; upholstered furniture; Clothing accessories, ribbons, buttons, buckles, wigs; 2. Increase in Quantities of Goods: Linen goods;
Beds; Clothes ; 3. Decrease in durability and material value of goods: move from pewter to earthenware and porcelain; lighter textiles, paper wall-hangings
Summary:
Work by historians such as Joan Thirsk, Lorna Weatherill, Mark Overton, John Styles [England], Jan de Vries [Netherlands and North West Europe]; Daniel Roche [France] Richard Goldthwaite, Luca
Molà, Marta Ajmar [Renaissance Italy] – have shown that by 16 th century in Southern and later
North-western European States a large proportion of the population, both urban and rural, had already broken away from a self-sufficiency model of production and consumption.
Idea of an industrial revolution separating modern and pre-modern – or an 18 th century consumer revolution preceding the industrial revolution - broken down by clearer investigation of internal trade and consumption habits. New model – ‘industrious revolution’ – where production driven by desire to consume - may provide more flexible understanding of transition period. People already had many more things of all kinds before the traditional take-off in the mid-late 18 th cent, and increases in material goods for the vast majority of the population was already a marked feature of North Western
Europe by the late 16 th century, though this increased enormously by end 18 th cent. Affordability linked to complicated relationship between production methods, consumption practices and the skill base and organisation of early modern households.
Most importantly – material culture does more than offer a resolution to an economic conundrum.
Household objects had multivalent social and cultural meanings. The reasons for their consumption are culturally contingent – and culturally revealing – [ie material culture of early modern religion radically changed historical interpretations]. It remains for historians to understand more about what material culture of all other aspects of life have to tell us that the ‘normal’ documentary channels do not reveal.
Useful Refs:
Jan de Vries The Industrious Revolution: Consumer behaviour and the Household Economy 1650 to the present.
(Cambridge, 2008)
Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability 1600-1800 (London, 2002)
Raffaella Sarti, Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture 1500-1800 (New Haven and London,
2002)
Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern
England (Oxford, 1978)
S.A.M. Adshead Material Culture in Europe and China 1400-1800 (1997)